


Achilles' Heels

by Anonymous



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Interlude, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 16:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16643459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "Not all dreams have meanings, Giles.""Obviously not, Buffy. But enough do that we should perhaps be a little wary of dismissing things out of hand.""If you say so."





	Achilles' Heels

_The night Giles returned, Buffy had the dream again._

_In it she was stood upon the edge of a great stone altar, looking out over a battlefield of sand and rock and dust. It was twilight, the moon full and bright, painting the desert in shades of silver and grey. There were Joshua trees casting long shadows. There were coyotes howling in the distance. There were bodies strewn across the ground._

_Bodies of girls. Hundreds of them. Dead but not buried._

_Most were barely older than eighteen, their throats slit and weeping pools of sticky black blood upon the dirt. Their eyes were long gone, picked clean from their sockets by scavengers. Dressed in white cotton, low cut and billowing in the desert winds, they reminded her of B-movie starlets, cruely sacrificed by the black-and-white monster of the week. Slim. Blonde. Beautiful._

_She shivered._

_A hand came to rest upon her bare shoulder. Beside her she could hear the sound of breathing, feel the warmth of another body pressed close to her side. The scent of parchment and grave dust surrounded her._

_“We’re not alone anymore.”_

_She felt heavy. Tired. Like a great weight had settled within her, stretching her skin too thin at the edges..._

*****

There were certain aspects of being the Slayer that Buffy truly despised. Imminent death and destruction notwithstanding, she hated how often she saw sunrise from the wrong end of the day. She hated the way the gravedirt worked its way into the knees of her jeans, leaving the denim yellow and stained. Hated the way the sheets clung to her when she woke, shivering and sweat-drenched, from her dreams.

It was midnight and she was tangled in the bed sheets again. High thread-count (a gift from her mother all too many years ago) and slick as silk against her skin, they wrapped around her ankles, trapped her arms around her waist. Held her down. Her heart was pounding. Breathing erratic, but beginning to calm as the familiar shapes and features of her room slowly swam into focus. 

She would not get back to sleep. Not tonight.

Rising, Buffy stripped her sweat-soaked pyjamas, leaving them in a pile at the end of her bed. The cool night air pricked at her skin as she dressed in a fresh pair of shorts and a t-shirt much too big. In the mirror, she caught a glimpse of herself; all bed-head and a tangle of limbs that still remained too thin. Dark circles hollowed out her eyes. There was a line of tension across her shoulders. And upon her skin, silver in the moonlight, were the last remaining scars from the Turok-Han. Tomorrow they would be little more than a memory. 

Through the wall to her left, there was the sound of snoring; the newest girl Giles had brought them was sleeping soundly amongst her fellows, wrapped up in sleeping bags and blankets upon Dawn’s bedroom floor. To her right there was silence: Willow slept like the dead. Below, in the living room, she could hear the sound of Giles pacing.

*****

He had returned earlier that day with a girl from Berlin. Her name was Ilse and her Watcher was dead. Perished, Giles had told them, in the outskirts of Pankow. A story all too familiar to Buffy by now, and one that made her wonder how long it would be before her Watcher suffered a similar fate.

“Delphine,” Giles had said sadly once Ilse had traipsed up the stairs of her new home, suitcase in hand and out of earshot. 

“Who?” said Xander. 

“Her name was Delphine, Ilse’s Watcher.”

“Did you know her well?” Willow had asked from her perch upon the coffee table.

“I was best man at her wedding,” Giles replied. He had cradled his mug of tea as he spoke. “And godfather to her son.”

“What happened to them?” Buffy said.

“Gone,” he said simply. “All gone.”

There had been no more questions after that.

*****

It was gone midnight in California. The streets of Sunnydale were dead, the residents of the cemeteries were not, and all the inhabitants of Revello Drive were asleep. All save two.

“Do you ever think about it?” Buffy asked, when they were sat side by side upon the couch, her dream still praying upon her mind.

“Think about what?” Giles replied.

“What it would like to be normal,” she said, looking down at her feet, to where they curled beneath the blanket. “You know. House, wife, kids. The works.”

“Sometimes.”

“Because I used to.”

There was a moment of silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock that sat upon the far wall. 

“It’s normal to want those things, Buffy,” said Giles after a time. 

“But that’s just the problem. I’m not normal, am I? And neither are you,” she countered. “And even if I was, it wouldn’t matter, would it? ‘Cause it’s not like I ever meet anyone I could really settle down with. God, more than half the guys I meet are dead.” Buffy paused, then corrected herself. “Un-dead. Whatever. Not exactly happily-ever-after material. A big white wedding’s off the table when your husband-to-be might burst into flames at the altar, and any realistic chance of reproduction is of the icky neck chomping variety.” 

“I-I hadn’t realised you felt that way.”

“I don’t.” Buffy shrugged. “Least, not always.”

“Buffy…” His green eyes held the same gentle sadness as his voice. “Buffy, what’s brought this on? Is this about Delphine?”

Buffy twisted her fingers in to the hem of her shirt. Outside, the wind whistled, grains of sand riding merrily on the currents. Giles waited. 

“Sometimes,” she said, “I have this dream where I’m stood on an altar in a desert amongst corpses. Girls with their throats slit and their eyes gone. They can’t see and they can’t scream. And as I’m standing and looking, I realise that these girls are me. All of them. One for every demon I’ve ever fought, every vampire I’ve ever slain, every death I’ve ever caused. A hundred Buffy Summers, all dead,” she said. “All dead, except for me on the altar with you.”

“I’m afraid I still don’t quite understand.”

“I’m pregnant in the dream, Giles.”

“Oh.” He looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. “I see.”

“It’s yours.”

“Ah.” She watched his knuckles go white. His breathing had become uneven. “Buffy, I-”

“God, Giles, no need to wig out. I’m not asking you to make it a reality,” she said, a slight tinge of panic to the condescension that coloured her words. “I’d never ask that. You’re real Giles, not dream Giles, and it would be humiliating and weird and you’d say no.” She pressed on, not giving him time to respond. “I’m asking if you know what it means. Because, this dream, it keeps happening. Over and over and over, whenever you come back home to me.”

“And when I leave?” he said carefully.

“It stops.”

Giles removed his glasses, polishing the lenses with the handkerchief he kept beneath his pillow. His pyjamas had no pockets, only creases from his suitcase and a tear in the seam by his left knee. 

“How does the dream end?”

“I don’t know. I always wake up before then,” she replied. “So do you think it means something?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Any ideas?”

“It could mean any number of things,” he said. “Or nothing at all.”

“Helpful.”

“Without my books, I can only make an educated guess at best.”

“Then guess.”

He paused for a moment, then said, “Change.”

“Change how?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But it’s going to be something fundamental to you and I, given our respective roles within the dreamscape. Mother and father to whatever it is that’s coming.” He frowned. “No doubt we’re about to do something incredibly foolish.”

“I was kinda hoping you wouldn’t say that,” she said. 

“Sorry.”

“S’okay.”

*****

_Later that night, she slept with her head against her Watcher’s shoulder, dreaming of the desert once more. Of the corpses that littered the sand. Of her Watcher stood above her upon the altar. Of the child cradled beneath her ribs._

_Their child._

_The stone was cold against her back. That was new. Giles had a hand pressed against her heart, his right, and a knee between her thighs. And that was new, too._

_In his left hand, he held a knife with a handle made of willow wood._

_“I’m sorry, Buffy.” The blood-red blade glinted in the moonlight. “I’m so sorry. But I have to.”_

*****

Later (much later) there was nothing left but the crater. A hole in the earth where the town used to be. And roads that lead to nowhere.

She had a new dream that night, in the back of the bus, her friends, her _children_ , curled up on the seats around her. And when morning broke, they drove east into the rising sun, leaving nothing but tire tracks and dust clouds behind them.


End file.
